Weeks before a manufactured traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge overtook Fort Lee, N.J., at the behest of aides to Gov. Chris Christie, two people central to the scheme jokingly discussed engineering traffic problems at a less prominent site: the home of a local rabbi.

"We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?" wrote Bridget Anne Kelly, then a deputy chief of staff for Christie.

"Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed," Wildstein wrote. (Again, he appeared to be kidding.)

The exchange was revealed in documents supplied by Wildstein as part of an investigation by the New Jersey Legislature.

The exchange is dated Aug. 19. Six days earlier, Kelly wrote that it was "time for some traffic problems" in Fort Lee - in an apparent reference to the plan to close some lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge.

The lanes were initially closed on Sept. 9, setting off wide-scale gridlock over several days.

Though it is unclear why Kelly or Wildstein might have been upset with the rabbi, and though the jam at the rabbi's house appears never to have happened, the documents lend new context to the highly charged environment in which Christie's aides operated, an atmosphere of political paybacks where the planned lane closings for Fort Lee could be joked about.

In an interview, the rabbi, who was identified as Mendy Carlebach, said he was unsure why he might have drawn the officials' ire. "I am clueless," he said.